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Shop nowMetropolitan Stories
A Novel
Narrator
Jill Eikenberry
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Length
4 hours 29 minutes
Language
English
From a writer who worked at the Metropolitan Museum for more than twenty-five years, an enchanting novel that shows us the Met that the public doesn’t see
Hidden behind the Picassos and Vermeers, the Temple of Dendur and the American Wing, exists another world: the hallways and offices, conservation studios, storerooms, and cafeteria that are home to the museum’s devoted and peculiar staff of 2,200 people—along with a few ghosts.
A surreal love letter to this private side of the Met, Metropolitan Stories unfolds in a series of amusing and poignant vignettes in which we discover larger-than-life characters, the downside of survival, and the powerful voices of the art itself. The result is a novel bursting with magic, humor, and energetic detail, but also a beautiful book about introspection, an ode to lives lived for art, ultimately building a powerful collage of human experience and the world of the imagination.
Christine Coulson began her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1991 as a summer intern in the European Paintings Department. She returned in 1994, and over the next twenty-five years, rose through the ranks of the Museum, working in the development office, the director’s office, and the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. She recently left the Met to write full time.
Reviews
“Only someone who deeply loves and understands the Metropolitan Museum could deliver such madcap, funny, magical, tender, intimate fables and stories. We are swept away in the museum. Beauty abounds. Yearning too. The art literally comes to life. And it makes perfect sense.”
“Offers a witty, enjoyable look at the elegant and sometimes unhinged world that exists within its walls.”
“Vivid, comedic, tender, and episodic…Her love for the Met, for humanness, and for beauty radiant on each surprising page.”
“Narrator Jill Eikenberry lends her gentle voice to these subtly humorous short stories…Eikenberry gives unique voices to antique chairs discussing their previous lives, muses slipping out of their paintings, custodians from the Bronx, and more…She offers just the right amount of attitude to the ‘mezz’ girls who serve guests at fundraising events and the two night security guards who tryst in the curator’s closet. The stories are a delight, made more so by Eikenberry’s splendid narration. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
“The Met that emerges from these stories is both grandiose and cheerfully mundane…Those who think they know the place will be beguiled by the look behind the scenes; those unfamiliar with it will be prompted to make its acquaintance.”
“An alternative guidebook to [the Met’s] rich treasures.”
“Gives us a book as kaleidoscopic and enchanting as the museum it brings so imaginatively to life. Witty, enthralling, and utterly original, this novel is a treasure.”
“Written with elegance, wit, and a flair for comic genius, Metropolitan Stories describes the museum world as it is and as it strives to be. Coulson[‘s]…deep sense of human character make this not only a delightful book but also a deeply rewarding one.”
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